A Brush with Nature: 25 Years of Personal Reflections on Nature

Richard Mabey is Britain's foremost nature writer. He has written a regular column for BBC Wildlife Magazine for over 25 years and, in doing so, has created a passionate, lyrical and deeply personal record of the natural world

The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot

In The Old Ways, Robert Macfarlane sets off from his Cambridge home to follow the ancient tracks, holloways, drove-roads, and sea paths that form part of a vast network of routes crisscrossing the British landscape and its waters, and connecting them to the continents beyond. The result is an immersive, enthralling exploration of the ghosts and voices that haunt old paths, of the stories our tracks keep and tell, of pilgrimage and ritual, and of song lines and their singers. Above all this is a book about people and place.

Landmarks

Penguin presents the unabridged, downloadable audiobook edition of Landmarks, a fascinating exploration of the relationship between language and landscapes by Robert Macfarlane, read by Roy McMillan. Words are grained into our landscapes, and landscapes are grained into our words. Landmarks is about the power of language to shape our sense of place.

Coffee snob says:"Love it, but it's costing me a fortune!"

Publisher's Summary

Nature writer Richard Mabey reflects on his lifelong relationship with science and the natural world in this collection of episodes originally broadcast on Radio 4 in September 2009 and repeated as part of The Essay series on Radio 3 in April 2010.

In Episode 1, 'The Greenhouse and the Field', Richard talks about his very first laboratory - his father's greenhouse, a magician's chamber, where as a nine-year-old he would conduct his own experiments with chemicals bought with his pocket money.

In Episode 2, 'The Lens and the Lichen', he explores how a lens can enhance and at times distort our view of nature. He discusses how the late 18th-century Claude glass influenced the Picturesque movement in art and the excitement of looking at lichens through a microscope.

In the third episode, 'The Stinkhorn and the Perfumier', he ponders why we are all so good at remembering scents, despite their having little relevance for our survival.

In Episode 4, 'The Songbird and the Sol-Fa', he presents his own thoughts on why birds sing and recounts how writers through the ages have had wildly different interpretations on the meaning of birdsong.

Episode 5, 'The Map and the Word', concludes with him considering how maps are not just a tool for getting from A to B; for him, they are a kind of 'cryptogram'.